DPI Awareness

 

Note: DPI Awareness is only available on Windows 10 build 1809 (October 2018) and above.

Sonar version 2024.04 introduces support for DPI Awareness, which improves rendering and reduces blurriness, particularly for font rendering. DPI Awareness may sharpen graphics and make text easier to read. Improvements will be most noticeable when using large, high resolution displays (such as 4K) and with Windows display scaling set higher than 100%.

Enabling/disabling DPI Awareness

To enable/disable DPI Awareness:

1.	Go to Edit > Preferences > Customization - Display.

2.	Select Enable DPI Awareness.

3.	Restart Sonar.

The next time you start Sonar, a notification appears to confirm that DPI Awareness is enabled.

 

Per plug-in DPI Awareness

In addition to the global Enable DPI Awareness app setting, you can also enable/disable DPI Awareness on a per plug-in basis for VST plug-ins. DPI Awareness is enabled by default for all VST plug-ins and can be disabled on a case-by-case basis depending on whether the plug-ins are compatible with display scaling. For example, some older plug-ins may appear too small on large, high resolution monitors, in which case disabling DPI Awareness might be preferable.

To enable/disable DPI Awareness for a VST plug-in:

1.	Open the VST plug-in's property page.

2.	Click the VST2/VST3 drop-down menu in the VST plug-in toolbar and select Enable Plugin DPI Awareness.

 

Note:   4 Display scaling is always disabled for DX plug-ins 4 Plug-in scaling is stored globally for a plug-in, not per project 4 Per plug-in display scaling is only active when the application has Enable DPI Awareness enabled in Edit > Preferences > Customization - Display

Known issues and limitations

Support for DPI Awareness is a work in progress that will continue to be improved in future updates.

Please note that while text rendering is greatly improved, there are some known issues and limitations that will be addressed in future updates, including:

Text that is embedded in bitmap graphics may still appear fuzzy.

Depending on scaling, some images might appear fuzzy in contrast to sharp and clear rendered text.

Text might be small in some places.

Track strips in the Inspector and Console view have not yet been updated.

Plug-in toolbar buttons and Synth Rack buttons may introduce image degradation as the DPI increases on high-DPI displays with Enable DPI Awareness enabled.

The Virtual Controller (piano and PC keyboard) may display incorrect UI layout at some display scales.

Spanning Sonar across two or more monitors with different resolutions/scales may result in incorrect UI layout.

After loading a project that was saved with low DPI settings, certain views may display incorrect UI layout when opened in high DPI mode. To correct, manually resize the affected view(s) and resave the project.

On multi-monitor systems with different resolutions/scales, incorrect UI layout may occur if Sonar starts up on anything other than the primary monitor.

Dynamic changes in DPI resolution while Sonar is running may result in incorrect UI layout. This includes:

Changing Windows display scale settings.

On multi-monitor systems, moving Sonar windows between monitors with different resolutions/scales.

 

See also:

Window management

Docking windows

MultiDock

Floating views and using dual video monitors

Locking views

Tiling windows

Full Screen mode

Screensets

X-Ray

View reference